Cancer rates among firefighters a rising concern

Judi Curriejcurrie@fosters.com

Sunday

Jul 26, 2015 at 3:15 AM

Technology has produced lightweight building materials, a 50-inch television set that can be hung on the wall and myriad products around the house that are flame retardant and stain resistant, but when a fire strikes possessions can become a toxic cloud of carcinogens such as arsenic, asbestos, formaldehyde and dioxin.

Without a simple way to link cancer rates to exposure, statistics are hard to come by, but area fire chiefs know the friends they’ve lost. So as states grapple over the question of whether worker’s compensation should cover cancer, the chiefs focus on prevention and protection.

“I was diagnosed when I was the chief of the Amherst, Mass., Fire Department, so the presumption was that I got the cancer on the job,” Hoyle said. “There were actually four of us in that department that got prostate cancer all within five years of each other.”

Hoyle said they had all been in an incident where a transformer caught fire and there were PCBs in it. “We all wore protective gear, had breathing apparatus on, but it was just weird that four of us came down with it,” Hoyle said.

Hoyle said because Massachusetts has a presumption law (that assumes the cancer was related to his job) the town of Amherst handled the surgery and the recovery.

George Gorman, has been the fire chief in South Berwick, Maine, for decades. He joined the force in 1966 and became chief a few years later. He doesn’t know if his lung cancer was job related.

“The doctor doesn’t know what caused it, it could have been from secondhand smoke from cigarettes,” Gorman said. “My father smoked a lot, my mother died young, fires didn’t help it.”

Gorman got sick two years ago and had part of his left lung taken out. He said he just got a clean bill of health Wednesday. But as Gorman approaches a half-century in the fire service he has lost a lot of friends.

“Between the cigarette smoke and the fires, most of the guys I started with are all dead now,” Gorman said. “They all smoked. When I first started, we’d have a meeting and the smoke was so thick you could cut it with a knife.”

Gorman said years of studies have begun to link cancer to the fires, but the impact was very real last spring when he attended a photography show by Bill Noonan.

“At the end of it, he showed Boston firefighters and chief officers who were in 20 years ago,” Gorman said. “They are all dead today from cancer - from not wearing air packs and using dirty turnout gear.”

Gorman said it opened a lot of eyes that night when Noonan showed the pictures of the men fighting fires in Boston and that they were all dead, most in their 50s.

“The first fire department battle I got involved in was the fight to buy an air pack," he said. "It was $385 back then and today they are $4,500.”

Awareness and protocols

Hoyle said the fire service is now much more careful about exposure, having learned not to take the breathing apparatus off as soon as the fire is out. There would still be airborne particulates, but the crews would remove the masks as soon as they could because they are cumbersome and make it hard to see.

“We now monitor the environment inside the fire building and wait until the level of carbon monoxide has fallen dramatically – almost to ambient – before we allow the crew to take the breathing apparatus off,” Hoyle said. “That didn’t happen 10 to 15 years ago. I suspect the cancer rates will be lower.”

Rollinsford Fire Chief Mark Rutherford also has a program of prevention. He purchased new air packs and an extractor for a cost of around $77,000.

“Not only does the new extractor allow us to clean the gear, we are setting up equipment on the truck as well so that we can do some decontamination at the fire scene,” Rutherford said. “Our basic premise is let’s leave this stuff at the scene and not bring it back with us," Rutherford said. “When we get back there are policies about washing their gear.”

Rutherford said cancer is a reality and they have to be more proactive about reducing exposure. “It’s the nature of the job," he said. "You have to go in, you have to do it and get the stuff on you. The stuff out there today has a lot more carcinogens so you have to get it off."

Advocacy

Maine, Massachusetts and Vermont have presumption laws that recognize the link between cancer and firefighting and treat it as a worker’s compensation injury. New Hampshire passed a presumption law in 1987 but the court found it unconstitutional because it mandated action without a funding mechanism.

Bill McQuillen is a lieutenant with the Portsmouth Fire Department and the secretary/treasurer for the Professional Fire Fighters of New Hampshire. He said the funding issue is over entrance physicals that the state mandated for firefighters to prove they were cancer-free when they came on the job.

“We have to find a funding mechanism and go through the legislation to get that law back on the books,” McQuillen said. “We found some sponsors to get a study committee formed to figure out how we can get the law funded.”

They brought in experts from Johns Hopkins, presented and submitted written testimony, including some personal stories, to a legislative committee. Now they wait and stand ready to provide information to get the funding in place.

“This is a pressing issue for our organization and for all firefighters,” McQuillen said. “We wanted to make sure we are able to get (presumption) here as well, it’s just a basic job protection.”

McQuillen said they feel evidence shows a higher incident rate with certain cancers and cases should be treated similar to exposure to a patient with diseases or blood-borne pathogens.

“When we can show exposure over time, the worker’s comp system should cover it,” McQuillen said.

PFFNH has taken a leadership role in prevention by developing a Cancer Awareness curriculum that is now a mandatory class for all incoming firefighters.

“The goal was to get cancer awareness out, what they could do to reduce their risk as a firefighter and in general,” McQuillen said. “We were one of the first states to get that type of program into our fire academy.”

Brunswick, Maine, Fire Chief Ken Brilliant, who is president of the Maine Fire Chiefs' Association, said Maine passed the cancer presumptive act a few years ago. It lists a number of cancers that would be presumed to have been caused by being on the job as a firefighter. But like New Hampshire, the cost of pre-screening becomes a challenge.

Brilliant said Maine’s workers' compensation board has settled some claims, but without acknowledging cause. “We’re not saying you got cancer because you were a firefighter, but we’re going to basically sign off," he said.

Brilliant said the law has helped some departments in Maine get better physicals in place for their firefighters, to try to catch things earlier and to put on record that they are not sick already.

“Some of the stuff you just can’t really test for financially or you can’t even get the test until there is a potential you might have it,” Brilliant said. “So chiefs are putting in place better protocols for cleaning of gear. They make sure they have it documented at all times.”

A house full of hazards

As the technology to keep firefighters safe improves, the dangers are increasing.

Hoyle said the building materials, the furnishings, chemicals and coatings that are manufactured today are worse than 25 years ago. Buildings are tighter, so fires burn hotter as they don’t ventilate as well.

According to McQuillen, 30 years ago the amount of foams and plastics in households was much less than now and products designed to fight fires have become a concern now.

“The wells at Pease were contaminated by the firefighting foam that was used by the Air Force 30 years ago,” McQuillen said.

Gorman said the prevalence of petroleum-based products means everything in your house is now made from oil and making a home blaze an oil fire.

“Just look under your sink, see what you have in there for chemicals to clean,” Gorman said. “It’s a hazmat zone under your sink.”

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